The Regulators - Stephen King [12]
What be happenin, my brother?' Gary asked, joining him.
'I think someone in that van down there just killed Cary Ripton and then shot the Reeds' dog,' Johnny Marinville said in a strange, flat voice.
'What? Why would anyone do that?'
'I have no idea.'
Gary saw a couple — the Carvers, he was almost positive — running down the street toward the store, closely pursued by a galumphing African-American gent that had to be the one, the only Brad Josephson.
Marinville turned to face him. 'This is bad shit. I'm calling the cops. In the meantime, I advise you to get off the street. Now.'
Marinville hurried up the walk to his house. Gary ignored his advice and stayed where he was, glass in hand, looking at the van idling in the middle of the street down there by the Entragian place, suddenly wishing (and for him this was an exceedingly odd wish) that he wasn't quite so drunk.
7
The door of the bungalow at 240 Poplar banged open and Collie Entragian came charging out exactly as Cary Ripton had always feared he someday would: with a gun in his hand. Otherwise, however, he looked pretty much all right — no foam on the lips, no bloodshot, buggy eyes. He was a tall man, six-four at least, starting to show a little softness in the belly but as broad and muscular through the shoulders as a football linebacker. He wore khaki pants and no shirt. There was shaving cream on the left side of his face, and a hand-towel over his shoulder. The gun in his hand was a .38, and might very well have been the service pistol Cary had often imagined while delivering the Shopper to the house on the corner.
Collie looked at the boy lying facedown and dead on his lawn, his clothes already damp from the lawn sprinkler (and the papers that had spilled out of his carrysack turning a soggy gray), and then at the van. He raised the pistol, clamping his left hand over his right wrist. Just as he did, the van began to roll. He almost fired anyway, then didn't. He had to be careful. There were people in Columbus, some of them very powerful, who would be delighted to hear that Collier Entragian had discharged a weapon on a suburban Wentworth street . . . a weapon he had been required by law to turn in, actually.
That's no excuse and you know it, he thought, turning as the van rolled, pivoting with it. Fire your weapon! Fire your goddam weapon!
But he didn't, and as the van turned left on to Hyacinth, he saw there was no license plate on the back . . . and what about the silver gadget on the roof? What in God's name had that been?
On the other side of the street, Mr and Mrs Carver were sprinting into the parking lot of the E-Z Stop. Josephson was behind them. The black man glanced to the left and saw the red van was gone — it had just disappeared behind the trees which screened the part of Hyacinth Street which ran east of Poplar — and then bent over, hands on knees, gasping for breath.
Collie walked across the street, tucking the barrel of the .38 into the back of his pants, and put his hand on Josephson's shoulder. 'You okay, man?'
Brad looked up at him and smiled painfully. His face was running with sweat. 'Maybe,' he said.
Collie walked over to the yellow rental truck, noting the red wagon nearby. There were a couple of unopened sodas lying inside it. A 3 Musketeers candybar lay beside one of the rear wheels. Someone had stepped on it and squashed it.
Screams from behind him. He turned and saw the Reed twins, their faces very pale beneath their summer tans, looking past their dog to the boy crumpled on his lawn. The twin with the blond hair — Jim, he thought — began to cry. The other one took a step backward, grimaced, then bent forward and vomited on to his own bare feet.
Crying loudly, Mrs Carver lifted her son back out of the truck. The boy, also bawling at maximum volume, threw his arms around her neck and clung like a limpet.
'Hush,' the woman in the jeans and the misbuttoned shirt said. 'Hush, lovey, it's over. The bad man's gone.'
David Carver took his daughter from the arms of the man lying awkwardly over the seat and enfolded her.